The statements in this section merely provide background information related to the present disclosure and may not constitute prior art.
The remaining service life of mechanical components and/or support structure that undergo cyclic stress/strain is generally not readily predictable. Previously developed systems have attempted to predict the remaining service life of a component based upon the total time or “regime of usage” that the component experiences stress/strain cycles. To ensure that a component is not used beyond its predicted life of usage, a component is often retired prematurely. Put differently, the component will be removed from service often with significant remaining service life, just to be certain that the component will not fail while it is in use, which could affect other parts of subsystems of a larger system in which the component is being used. In either event, attempting to predict the remaining usage life of a component that is subject to stress/strain cycles, or prematurely retiring the component from service, can be costly in terms of the time and labor required in removing and replacing the component. Also, it is conceivable that the component may be stressed beyond the regime-assigned values and thus may fail before the regime-allotted lifetime.
Thus, it would be highly desirable to provide a system that is able to monitor stress/strain cycles that a given component experiences during normal use, and from such information to provide a direct measure of the fatigue life of the component that is expended, and an indication of the remaining fatigue life of a component having a known fatigue life.